I Went on a Ghost Tour So You Don’t Have To
Have you ever seen a ghost tour on campus or around Colonial Williamsburg at night? Are you curious what it’s like, but don’t have room in your budget after your latest Wawa run? Join your Flat Hat Magazine ghost tour guide, JR Herman ‘24, as she tells all.
ZACHARY LUTZKY // FLAT HAT MAGAZINE
This spooky season, I sampled both Colonial Williamsburg’s Haunted Williamsburg Tour and the Colonial Ghosts’ Haunted Tour (Extended Version) to bring you a best-hits list of the Burg’s ghost stories. I report to you what our guides told us, making no attempt to confirm or reject the sincerity of any account, historical or modern. My goal, after all, is simply to give you a ghost tour experience on the cheap.
OK everyone, here’s a lantern. Try not to step in any horse poop along the way. You do want an authentic experience, right?
Let’s get started!
The George Wythe House
First up on my best-hits tour is the Wythe House, home of George Wythe, Declaration of Independence signer, Founding Father, Continental Congress and Constitution Convention Representative, America’s first law professor, mentor of Thomas Jefferson — we get it, he had a great résumé. The most famous legend associated with his house is that of Lady Anne Skipwith, a guest of George Wythe. According to legend, Lady Anne accompanied her husband to a ball at the Governor’s Palace where she discovered that he was having an affair with her sister — yikes. She left the party in tears, losing one of her red high heels as she fled the Palace. No, she didn’t break her neck walking up the Wythe House stairs with only one heel (impressive given my own near-death experiences in flats on the uneven Wren Building stairs, but I digress). A few days later though, Lady Anne committed suicide, and her tormented ghost still wanders up and down the stairs with only one heel.
ZACHARY LUTZKY // FLAT HAT MAGAZINE
Is this true? Absolutely not, according to the guide of the official Colonial Williamsburg ghost tour who explained that “outside tours” often tell the tale, despite its ahistorical basis. While Lady Anne and her husband did stay at the Wythe House, she neither died there nor killed herself. In reality, she died in childbirth.
In fact, the only deaths known to have occurred in the Wythe House were those from old age, which would perhaps suggest a lack of lingering spirits — accounts of spirits are typically associated with sudden, tragic deaths and lives cut short.
With that caveat, the Wythe House is still said to be home to a ghost. Reenactors in the house have reported looking into a mirror on the first floor and seeing a beautiful woman in a blue satin gown standing beside them. When the employee turns around, the woman, of course, has vanished without a trace. This occurs so frequently that when a concerned new employee told a co-worker what she had witnessed, the co-worker replied “Oh yeah, that happens all the time.” Colonial Williamsburg employees alone in the building have also reported items in their bags being taken out, placed in piles on different chairs, and aesthetically arranged, prompting speculation that this odd yet semi-frequent happening may be the work of the ghost of George Wythe’s wife, Elizabeth, who was known for excessive arranging, organizing, and lining up of household objects (tendencies which today would likely be recognized as symptoms of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder).
Recently, Colonial Williamsburg employees arrived an hour early to unlock the house in preparation for the night’s tour. After the first employee failed to open the house with the key, a second employee tried. Both times, the key turned, but the door wouldn’t open. The employees called security, but to no avail — their master key similarly failed to unlock the door. Security then tried to unlock the basement entrance, but it wouldn’t budge either. With only 20 minutes ’til the tour, the Colonial Williamsburg Operations team arrived, entering the house through a window SWAT-team-style to open the front door from the inside. As they entered the house, they realized that all of the doors had been locked via thumb turn, the 18th-century version of a deadbolt. In other words, every door had been locked from the inside. Security, fearing a potential intruder, checked the house and reviewed the video footage, but there was no indication that anyone had been in the house. Spooky. The mystery of who (or what) locked these thumb turns remains unsolved, but employees once again suspect Elizabeth Wythe, known for her perfectionism. After all, she hadn’t missed a single thumb turn.
The Peyton Randolph House
Next up is the Peyton Randolph House on Nicholson Street, considered so haunted that some Colonial Williamsburg employees refuse to be alone in the house at night. With 37 unexpected, tragic, and often violent deaths, some consider it the most haunted building in America. Years ago, a newly hired security guard conducted a check of the house at night and failed to respond to the dispatcher for nearly half an hour, prompting the Sergeant and Lieutenant to enter the building. As they descended the stairs to the basement, they saw light streaming through the bottom of the door. The door, however, wouldn’t open. Maybe the security guard accidentally locked himself in? The problem, though, is that the basement door can only be locked from the outside. They banged on the door for about 20 seconds, and then all of a sudden, the door swung open by itself … and the Sergeant and Lieutenant saw the security guard sitting on the steps with one hand on his radio and the other on his gun. Frazzled and grateful that assistance had arrived, he reported that something had forcefully grabbed him and prevented him from moving. Guards aren’t paid bonuses for boos, and unsurprisingly, he quit two weeks later.
ZACHARY LUTZKY // FLAT HAT MAGAZINE
Reported hauntings of the Randolph House go at least as far back as 1824, when the Marquis de Lafayette, a French general during the American Revolution, visited the house and claimed that a cold hand gripped his shoulder in the dead of night. Other visitors to the house have reported hearing mysterious voices, and one ghost tour guest reported seeing candle flames reacting to the tour guide’s voice. Others claim to have heard knocking sounds, moans, giggles, and moving furniture — or was that a description of a frat party?
The Governor’s Palace
Make sure to pay attention to where you’re walking, because the horses are quite active along this road. OK, here we are; welcome to the Governor’s Palace, one of Colonial Williamsburg’s top photo destinations … and also an ex-mass grave. During renovations in the 1930s, 158 skeletons were found here. 156 of these skeletons belonged to soldiers who had fought at the Siege of Yorktown and who were recovering from their wounds at the Palace (which had been converted into a makeshift hospital) when the building tragically burned down, killing these wounded soldiers along with two nurses. About a decade ago, Colonial Williamsburg offered a special tour of the Palace to honor these unknown soldiers. Our guide recalled he had given the tour for three years with no incident, but one night — on Veterans’ Day — he and a fellow employee were locking the building after the last tour and heard a voice saying “Thank you.” It has since happened 50 or 60 times, but only when these two veterans lock up the building.
The Wren Building
As we leave Colonial Williamsburg and approach campus (conjure up an image of a touristy group with lanterns awkwardly crossing Confusion Corner), we’ll be looking at Ancient Campus: the Wren Building, the Brafferton, and the President’s House. The Wren Building was converted into a hospital for wounded French soldiers during the Revolutionary War, and the ghosts of those who died from wounds are said to roam the building at night. Some passersby hear footsteps, while others claim to have seen ghostly figures in uniform wandering the hallways. Of course, there are also several stories involving drunk frat boys and the crypt (an “only at William & Mary” moment), but you’ve probably already heard those…
ZACHARY LUTZKY // FLAT HAT MAGAZINE
The Brafferton
Up until the onset of the Revolutionary War, the Brafferton served as a Crown-supported indoctrination program, the goal of which was to Christianize young Native American boys and immerse them in British culture in the hopes that they (and their tribes) would become British allies. The students in the Brafferton (many of whom had been kidnapped) suffered greatly from loneliness, homesickness, and disease. One of the boys took comfort in running and every night would escape from the building, run, and return by the next morning. One night, however, the boy never returned. According to legend, his body was found the next day, killed either by a colonist or a jealous student. Over the years, students walking by the building at night have reported hearing a child’s faint laughter. Others have claimed to have felt someone run past them only to see no one there, or instead, to have witnessed a ghostly figure running up and down the Sunken Gardens. Screams near the Sunken Gardens have also been linked to this legend, but as the tour guide (a student of the College) admitted, those were probably just the screams of students streaking the “Sunky G” as part of the Triathlon.
The President’s House
For years, a closet door on the second floor of the President’s House refused to close. Similar occurrences in GGV are blamed on cockroach conventions, but in the case of the President’s House, everyone just blamed it on the building’s age. When the house was being renovated, contractors discovered the skeleton of a young girl inside the upper-story wall. They say that after her bones were properly laid to rest, the closet door closed without a hitch.
Hope you enjoyed this best-hits list of our haunted little town’s ghost stories! BOO!
ZACHARY LUTZKY // FLAT HAT MAGAZINE
